Jakarta (Greeners) – Indonesian Institute for Science (LIPI) encourages researchers or plant breeders to register new plant varieties as part of intellectual rights protection, said a scientist, in Jakarta, on Friday (12/5).
Sri Rahayu, researcher of Plant Conservation Center of Bogor Botanical Garden – LIPI, said that the awareness of researchers and plant breeders to register new varieties they’ve discovered to be legally protected was still need to be pushed. One way is to register the new varieties into Plant Variety Protection under Ministry of Agriculture.
“PVP will be useful if there’s high commercial potential on the new varieties,” she said.
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PVP is one of intellectual rights given to protect a new plant variety exclusively for its breeding rights. The aim of the registration is to protect the variety from irresponsible breeding, especially if the breed showed better results from its host.
Furthermore, she said that registered variety must be genuinely new, never been there before, and unique. The new plants must also not be changed if replicate to avoid any anomaly.
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If researchers want to register the variety to PVP, she said, there were steps starting from substance, administrative, and plant availability for breeding.
She said the criteria to obtain PVP must meet elements of New, Unique, Uniformity and Stable.
“New means not traded in Indonesia, unique means can be differentiated from other varieties, uniformity in the main traits and stable even if planted frequently,” she added.
New varieties registered in PVP are lipstick plants (Aeschynanthus Soedjana Kassan), hoya flower (Hoya Kusnoto), lipstick plant (Aeschynanthus Mahligai), begonia flower (Begonia Tuti Siregar), and Begonia Lovely Jo.
Sri Rahayu is PVP registered for hoya flower and lipstick plant meanwhile begonia was discovered by Hartutiningsih with Wisnu Handoyo Ardi and I Made Ardaka.
Reports by Danny Kosasih
21 Apr 2024 
